Transformation of American Southern Commemorative Landscapes

Commemorative landscapes both reflect cultural values and provide a context to sustain and challenge those values. Landscapes can be constructed and used to actively remember or forget certain identities, groups, and histories in order to maintain or sometimes challenge those histories. Southern plantation tourism plays an important role in developing basic understanding of race in the United States by establishing a sense of place and meaning through the exploration of commemorative landscapes. How southern commemorative landscapes provide symbolic and substantive representations of what it means to be southern and how southern culture is defined and debated form key questions in the scientific study of social memory and commemorative landscapes. The objective of this research is to contribute to theory centered on the transformation of racialized southern commemorative landscapes within the United States. Specifically, the researchers examine the processes and politics of incorporating slavery into plantation landscapes as sites symbolic of contemporary struggles over the meanings and uses of southern and American heritage. Incorporating critical discussions of slavery at such sites not only enhances historical accuracy, but is also necessary to understand contemporary race relations in the United States. This research describes and explains the manner and extent to which southern tourist plantations are moving toward an incorporation of the history of the enslaved into the commemorative landscape of the region and nation. These issues are of importance to contemporary American society as a whole, and of specific interest to those who own, manage, or visit these tourist sites.

Traditionally, tourism plantations have given authority to the idea of white privilege and the erasure of the enslaved from southern plantation history, but these representations have begun to change. This framework drives the following research questions: (1) To what extent and how are owners/operators of plantations incorporating slavery into the built, narrative, and performative landscapes at plantations? (2) What were/are the impetuses for change, towards an inclusion of slavery into the built, narrative, and performative landscapes of plantations? (3) What are the tourists' expectations regarding slavery and reactions to the exclusion or inclusion of slavery as part of the built, narrative, and performative landscapes of plantations? (4) How is the incorporation of slavery into the built, narrative, and performative landscapes perceived changing over time at plantations? (5) How do docents embrace, resist and embody the inclusion of slavery into the built, narrative, and performative landscapes of plantations? (6) What are the tourists' pre- and post-conceptions of slavery as part of the built, narrative, and performative landscapes at plantations? The project breaks new ground in the literature by conducting fieldwork at multiple plantation sites and types, as well as examining multiple stakeholders (e.g., owners/operators, docents, and tourists). The study compares three prominent plantation regions through multiple study sites in each region. At each site, the researchers apply a mixed methods approach, including a quasi-experimental design, to interview plantation owner/operators, participant observers of plantation tours, interview docents, and surveys and interviews of tourists.